On the Issues

Jobs and Growth

As a founding board member of Employment Means Success, I am keenly aware of the hurdles facing unemployed workers in San Bernardino County. Employment Means Success is an Inland Empire non-profit that finds jobs for unemployed workers in our community. These people—our neighbors—want nothing more than the dignity of earning their own way and the ability to provide for themselves and their families.

We currently have dozens of federal, state, and local jobs initiatives including the California Training Benefits Program, One Stop Jobs Centers, and Jobs Corps. But these programs suffer from two big problems:

They fail to train workers for twenty-first century jobs.

They can’t overcome the high tax and regulatory costs that crush job creation and reduce take-home pay.

We can address the first problem by putting renewed emphasis on vocational training. Here in San Bernardino County, plumbers, electricians, and other skilled tradespeople earn up to 55% more than recent college graduates. Yet we have virtually eliminated vocational training from our public schools.

This has to stop. We must make vocational training a priority again. Our young people should have the opportunity to learn practical skills that earn high wages. They should have the opportunity to begin working in a high-paying trade directly out of high school, rather than spending many years attempting to gain a college degree that in many cases won’t pay the bills.

Our educational system should promote vocational training by changing the way it awards academic certifications. Instead of broad degree categories like the associate’s degree and the bachelor’s degree, we need to switch to a system of skills-based certifications that clearly indicate what concepts, techniques, and skills a student has mastered.

The government can jump-start this new system of skills certifications by changing the way it advertises for government jobs. Instead of requiring, for example, a “bachelor’s degree” for a given job opening, the government should post a list of the skills required by that job. Anybody who has those skills will be eligible to apply whether or not they ever earned an old-style bachelor’s degree. This new system of skill-based hiring will become the economy’s new standard. Good jobs will be available without having to sit through useless classes.

But real prosperity will only be realized if businesses can afford to hire people. Unfortunately, taxes and red tape strangle jobs here in San Bernardino County as well as in the rest of the country.

The consequences are heartbreaking. Unemployment rips families apart. It causes depression and crushes hope. It removes the dignity of earned success and the pride that comes from being able to provide for oneself and one’s family.

That is why it is so crucial to get the unemployed members of our community back to work as quickly as possible. If they cannot reach the first rung on the ladder of success, they will be left behind at ground level, with decaying skills and no way to support themselves or their families.

The government can help with sensible policies that increase the willingness of employers to hire and train the unemployed. A major step forward will be tax credits and direct subsidies for hiring the unemployed. Millions of unemployed workers will be able to get back on the ladder of success, learn new skills, and move on to higher paying jobs. They will also be earning their own keep and contributing with taxes instead of having to depend on costly government assistance programs to get by.

National Security

The December 2, 2015 terrorist attack took place in my district, at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. Two terrorists murdered 14 people before fleeing the scene.

Our brave first responders put their lives on the line to track down and neutralize the killers. But more must be done. Washington must give local agencies the resources and assistance they need to prevent future attacks.

First and foremost, the federal government must screen immigrants more closely. Our nation is warm and welcoming. In a typical year, we receive 70 percent of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers. But we can’t let ISIS and al-Qaeda take advantage of our generosity. Washington should only grant visas to immigrants whose backgrounds and intentions can be fully verified.

Washington also needs to increase funding for the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training Program, which is the only federal program that trains state and local law enforcement to recognize and neutralize terrorism. The program must be expanded so that every local jurisdiction can receive world-class anti-terrorism training. Local law enforcement must be able to prevent as well as respond.

The federal government can also do more to help local law enforcement obtain the equipment they need to deal with active shooters. In early 2017, President Trump reactivated the federal program under which the U.S. military donates surplus equipment to local law enforcement. This was a major step forward. Surplus military equipment should not be gathering dust in remote storage facilities. It should be in the hands of local law enforcement, saving lives.

In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, authorities learned that several neighbors had seen suspicious activity beforehand. But they didn’t report it because they were afraid of being accused of racism. We need to make it clear that “we the people” are the first line of defense and that a terrorist is a terrorist no matter where they come from or what they look like. Nobody should die because of political correctness.

Fighting terrorism on the home front is crucial—but we are better off defeating it abroad, before it crosses our borders. We must aggressively target the funding sources that allow terrorist organizations to multiply and kill. We must bomb terrorist-controlled oil networks, freeze the assets of any individuals funneling money to terrorists, and impose economically crippling sanctions on Iran and other state sponsors of terror.

Finally, we must always remember that our military should not be used for nation building. It is foolish to believe that we can transform entire societies in just a few short years. America will offer its support to all who seek freedom. But they must earn it and maintain it on their own.

Healthcare

Our current healthcare system is costly, inefficient, and unfair. It destroys jobs and fails the vulnerable both here in San Bernardino County and in the rest of the country.

Our current healthcare system was created in 2010 when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. That law promised universal health insurance and lower prices. But health care costs have continued to increase and millions are still uninsured.

Fortunately, a proven solution already exists in the form of high-deductible health insurance plans that are coupled with employer-funded health savings deposits that are large enough to fully cover annual deductibles.

By empowering consumers, these plans have been proven to cut healthcare costs by almost one-third immediately and by even greater amounts over time. They are also fully consistent with our desire to provide quality healthcare to all Americans.

These intelligently crafted plans have been proven to work for private sector employees, government workers, and Medicaid recipients. In all cases, costs fell as wasteful spending was eliminated. Even better, participation in annual checkups and preventative care was just as good as in traditional health insurance plans. Long-term health outcomes are just as good or better than with traditional insurance plans.

In addition to providing great healthcare at low prices, these plans would also deliver more jobs and higher pay. That will happen because most workers get their health insurance from their employer. And in most cases it is the employer who pays the insurance premium. By massively reducing health insurance costs, employers will find it much less expensive to hire workers. Across the country, millions of new jobs will be created as the cost of labor plummets. Here in San Bernardino County, unemployment will shrivel as tens of thousands of new jobs become available.

At the same time, the take-home pay of workers who already have jobs will increase. That’s because employers will be able to redirect a huge chunk of worker compensation away from healthcare benefits and into paychecks. Families will have more money in their pockets to spend on education, recreation, food, clothing, and housing. They will also be able to save more. And U.S. businesses will instantly become more competitive against foreign competition because they will no longer find themselves handicapped by the world’s highest healthcare costs.

World Class K-12 Schools

Training workers for twenty-first century jobs begins with high-quality public schools. A generation ago, California had the best schools in the world. But short-term thinking has caused governments to slash education budgets.

We must help our teachers and schools provide a world-class education to each and every child. The best education systems are built on two policies. First, hiring and firing decisions must be handled at the school level. Second, government education funding should automatically follow students to whatever school they wish to attend. Vouchers are too complicated and too slow. Students should have instant access to their share of government education dollars. They should never be trapped in failing schools. They should always have the money to move to a better school.

We also need to streamline education and accreditation. Students in our community should be able to learn and become certified in new skills without having to sit through irrelevant material mandated by federal bureaucrats. Students here in San Bernardino County should be able to post a list of their certified skills to employment websites and be automatically matched with employers seeking those skills. Under this system, students will be able to see which skills are in high demand by employers. They will be able to use that knowledge to guide their education decisions. They will no longer have to wonder what skills they should learn. They will no longer have to waste time in classes that won’t get them good paying jobs.

Our commitment to high-quality public education should not be limited to classrooms and textbooks. We must also develop low-cost online classes for any skills that can be learned over the Internet. For anything that can be mastered online, students of all ages will be able to learn without having to visit a physical classroom, sign up for formal classes, or rearrange their work and family schedules to fit class times. They will be able learn on their smart phones, tablets, and laptops anytime, anywhere.

Here in the Inland Empire, there are more college students than there are seats available in classes. As a result, students are unable to graduate on time. An associate’s degree should take two years. But less than 44% of Chaffey College students and less than 33% of San Bernardino Valley College students are able to graduate even after six years.

Massive delays have also become the norm at our public universities, where undergraduate degrees should only take four years. At Cal State San Bernardino and the other Cal State Universities, just 16% of students are able to graduate within four years and only about half are able to finish within six years. This is unacceptable. Each extra year that a student takes to graduate will cost an average of $50,000 in additional tuition and lost lifetime wages. It also means higher student loan debt.

Education costs are out of control because we have allowed government bureaucracy to dominate education. Between 1978 and 2008, the number of teachers in the Cal State system increased by only 4%. At the same time, the number of education bureaucrats increased by 213% and surpassed the number of teachers. This is unacceptable. We must shrink the bureaucracy, cut the red tape, and return billions of dollars of education spending to where they actually belong—in the classroom, helping students learn.

Affordable Higher Education

The Federal government claims that its student loan program helps make higher education more affordable. But research shows the opposite.

Student loans make college and vocational training less affordable because schools simply raise tuition rates whenever they see students arriving with more loan money. Recent research suggests that college tuition would be 75% lower if student loans did not exist.

The Class of 2015 graduated with an average of $35,000 of student loan debt—and that’s just the debt they had to take on to get bachelor’s degrees. Those heading to graduate school face the possibility of having to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional debt.

Student loan repayments soak up the money young people would otherwise use to buy homes, start families, and launch new businesses. The money they should be spending and investing in our community is flowing instead to the federal Department of Education, which now issues and controls nearly 93 percent of all student loans.

The burden of student loan repayments is killing jobs growth because young people burdened with debt lack both the money and the freedom to pursue new business opportunities. They can’t save enough money to start a business when large loan payments make it impossible to build a nest egg. Unless we lift the burden of student loan debt, our best-educated and hardest-working young people will not be able to launch the new businesses that have traditionally generated nearly all of the new jobs in the American economy.

The Social Security and Medicare systems are also at stake. If young people are unable to start new businesses, buy homes, or spend in the local economy, our tax base will shrink. There will not be enough money flowing into the Social Security system to protect our seniors. The only way we can guarantee the solvency of the Social Security system is by making sure that we have a rapidly growing economy powered by the youthful energy and vigorous efforts of young Americans.

We need to lift the burden of student loan debt while providing higher education and vocational training at low cost. Fortunately, we already have a proven solution. We can return to the educational policies of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

During those decades, higher education costs fell year after year because government money went into massively expanding the U.C. system, the Cal State system, and our network of community colleges. Government money didn’t go to student lending. It went to hiring more teachers and building more classrooms. Enrollments and access soared while tuition declined.

We must return to those policies. Students should not have to mortgage their futures to get an education. Government higher education funding should once again flow toward increasing the supply of education rather than the supply of debt.

Immigration

Our current immigration policies fail to protect American workers from unfair competition. We also have a border that is vulnerable to terrorists, drug cartels, and human traffickers. We must implement a comprehensive set of immigration reforms to secure the border, protect American workers, and resolve illegal immigration.

Twenty percent of the people caught sneaking into the United States have criminal records back home. Even worse, terrorist organizations like ISIS have threatened to cross our unsecured borders to attack us.

Securing our borders will require different techniques in different places. In some cases it will mean drones in the air. In other cases it will be walls on the border, patrol boats on the coast, or seismic surveillance underground.

It is time for Washington to put political correctness and old-fashioned thinking aside. Our greatest enemy is no longer a Soviet Union located thousands of miles away. Our enemies are now at our borders. We must either keep them out or cease to be a nation.

Americans are rightly proud that United States welcomes more refugees than any other country in the world. In fact, the United States accounted for 70 percent of all refugee placements made anywhere in the world by the United Nations over the past five years. But in an age of international terrorism we need to screen people effectively.

We must only accept refugees whose backgrounds and intentions can be verified with biometrics, official documents, and accurate personal histories. We must only accept refugees whose dreams and values are in line with our own.

The primary goal of comprehensive immigration reform must be to protect American jobs and improve American competitiveness. We can do this by granting Green Cards only to applicants whose jobs skills match up with industries that currently have jobs shortages. That way, every new immigrant will be able to immediately find work without displacing hard working Americans or causing wages to crash.

We must also require immigrants to have employment and educational backgrounds that fill needs here in America. Canada and Australia have already seen great success with a similar system. Applicants have to answer questions about their job skills, educational attainment, and language abilities. Only those who are a good fit for the local economy are admitted.

By contrast, our current system of legal immigration is completely random. We run a lottery each year for Green Cards. As a result, tens of thousands of people are admitted to our country each year without any care as to whether their job skills match local needs. Far too often, they displace American workers and push down wages.

By switching to a system that puts the focus on job skills, education, and the needs of the American economy, we can welcome millions of new Americans without having to tell anybody who is already a citizen that their livelihood may be in jeopardy.

Once our new jobs-based immigration system is set up, we will be able to sensibly and humanely resolve the status of the 11 million people who are currently residing illegally in the United States. Many of them live quietly, pay taxes, and support their families—which often include children born in America.

But simple fairness requires that illegal aliens should not be able to become citizens any faster or any easier than applicants who are willing to obey our immigration laws. Fairness also requires that anybody who breaks the law should pay a penalty.

There can be no amnesty. We should not simply forgive and forget when it comes to people violating our borders and breaking our laws. Nobody should be above the law. Those who wish to live here must be willing to abide by our laws and institutions.

We can resolve the status of illegal immigrants by allowing anybody residing illegally in the United States to come forward, identify themselves, and prove they have no criminal record. They will also need to pay any back taxes, pay a fine, and perform community service. In exchange, they can earn a permit to reside in the United States. That permit will not be a path to citizenship. It only gives them the right to work and pay taxes in the United States.

If any permit holders want to apply for citizenship at a later date, they will have to meet the same employment and educational standards as anybody else applying for a Green Card under our new jobs-based immigration system. In addition, they will have to go to the very back of the line—including getting behind any illegal aliens who were caught and deported.

Under U.S. law, anybody who has been caught and deported has to wait at least 10 years before they can apply for a Green Card. That 10-year penalty should also be applied to anybody who was not caught and deported. They can apply to live and work legally, but they will have to wait ten years before becoming eligible to apply for a Green Card under U.S. law. And even then, they will not be able to obtain a Green Card without meeting the same educational and jobs standards that will be applied to every other applicant.

An entirely different set of laws must be applied to illegal aliens who have been deported after having been convicted of major felonies in the United States. These people are dangerous criminals. If they are subsequently caught attempting to sneak into the United States illegally, they should be subject to the five-year mandatory minimum prison terms stipulated by Kate’s Law.

2nd Amendment

The Founding Fathers were students of history who knew that governments pursuing tyranny and total control always ban the private ownership of firearms. Governments that are intent on total control disarm the people in order to make them helpless against government troops.

To prevent a slide toward tyranny from happening here in the United States, the Founding Fathers insisted on the Second Amendment.The other parts of the Bill of Rights put strict limits on what the government can do to individual citizens and to the populace as a whole.But without the right to armed self-defense, none of the other rights would be secure.

The Supreme Court has recognized the Second Amendment as providing an individual right to bear arms. With that individual right comes an individual responsibility for the safe and proper use of firearms. To that end, the government should promote gun safety programs and encourage firearms education.

We must also pass laws that will make it easier for mental health professionals to identify, institutionalize, and care for the severely mentally ill who have shown an interest in initiating acts of mass violence.Under current law, a person must be an “imminent threat” to themselves or others before they can be committed against their will to psychiatric care.That legal standard is far too restrictive.We have now experienced so many tragedies in which mental health professionals were unable to commit a person to treatment even after they had revealed violent fantasies to both family members and mental health professionals.We can preserve the right to bear arms while also reducing their unlawful use.But to do so, we must ensure that the mentally unstable who have violent fantasies are placed under proper care, away from firearms, where they can receive the treatment they need.

The San Bernardino terrorist attack took place here in Congressional District 31 on December 2, 2015.On that tragic day, four minutes passed between the first 911 call and the arrival of the first police officers. Four minutes is a heroically short response time and our brave first responders deserve only praise.But four minutes was also enough time for 14 to be killed, 21 others to be injured—and for the attackers to make their getaway.

The attack took place at a holiday party held within the Inland Regional Center, a government facility that had been declared to be a “gun-free zone” by well-meaning local officials.Unfortunately, gun-free zones render law-abiding citizens helpless when a shooting takes place.Law-abiding citizens should not be forced to wait four minutes for armed assistance to arrive. They should have the ability to return fire immediately and thereby drastically reduce the number of casualties.

Limiting the 2nd Amendment with gun-free zones and other restrictions only increases the death toll when terrorists and other criminals strike.It’s no coincidence that mass shooters target gun-free zones. They target locations where gun restrictions have rendered people helpless.

To protect them, we must ensure that the 2nd Amendment is never abridged by local or state officials.Law-abiding citizen should always have the option of carrying firearms for self-defense.